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Gov. Rick Snyder on sequestration: Washington is ‘messed up’

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder ripped Washington for failing to come up with a plan to replace the across-the-board budget cuts set to begin taking effect later this week.

“It just shows how messed up Washington is,” Snyder, a Republican, said in a Tuesday morning interview with POLITICO LIVE. “I don’t want to get into the blame game or get in the middle of all the fighting and bickering and blaming going on. The point is, there’s a problem. We have a budget deficit problem. We have a budget problem. And we need to do tax reform in Washington. Those are all serious topics. The point is, just solve the problem.”

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POLITICO LIVE: Sequester fact check

Congress and the White House have been at an impasse over how – if at all — to replace $1.2 trillion in nearly across-the-board sequester cuts for this fiscal year that were agreed upon as part a deal to raise thenation’s debt ceiling in August 2011. While the big entitlement programs are mostly spared by the plan, the Pentagon and annually funded domestic programs are under the ax. If Congress does nothing, the executive branch will have to implement plans to slash costs beginning Friday.

That will put a squeeze on state budgets, like the one Snyder administers in Michigan. Snyder joins a chorus of Republican governors who’ve criticized Congress for how they’ve handled the sequester.

The White House has painted a doomsday scenario for the public in which essential government services will be less effective. In a seven-page memo on potential cuts to services in Michigan, the White House included projections of $22 million less in federal funding for primary and secondary education, 4 million fewer meals provided for seniors through the “Meals on Wheels” program and a $482,000 cut in Justice Department grants for the state.

“Those cuts would do some damage, but as a practical matter I don’t spend time looking at the individual cuts when I talk about it because that’s really a distraction from the big point of, the sequestration to begin with is a failure point,” Snyder said. “The big message is Washington’s a mess. They’ve failed to address this issue, they should get on top of it, solve it. Let’s just solve it in a positive constructive way.”

He also stopped short of offering a specific prescription for how to construct a deficit-reduction package to replace sequestration, but said he’s not opposed to cuts if – to borrow a term from President Barack Obama – they aren’t made with an across-the-board meat ax.

“I’ve been clear I’ve been open to say as part of a real solution we’re happy to be part of it in terms of if we have to take some cuts, we can take them but let’s do it in a smart way and a thoughtful way not just an arbitrary way,” he said.